Warrior of Fire

by Shona Husk

  A look passed between Quinn and Saba. Quinn nodded. Saba sighed.

  Was that good news or bad news? Why did she care? It would only be Albah news and would be discussed in depth tonight.

  She planned on sitting on a sofa at the back and painting her nails. She’d brought three different colors for the occasion. Gold, red, and black. Tomorrow night she was going out with her friends. Just because she was waiting to run into an Albah man on a train did not mean she was on a shelf getting dusty.

  Humans could be fun for short-term flings where they didn’t need to know much about her. She didn’t like lying; it was bad enough she couldn’t share such a big part of her life with her friends. There was a distance she was sure they could feel. She could feel it. But talking about magic was a sure way of getting funny looks or unwanted attention.

  They moved out of the hallway and into the lounge room. There were three laptops set up on the coffee table. Dale had just put pens and paper on the table next to a file.

  “Leira.” He gave her a nod and a smile.

  Yeah, she wasn’t talking to him either. He was a cop. He should’ve told her there was a vampire serial killer running around and to be careful when she went clubbing. Not that she frequented the dives that the killer had hunted at, or that she and Dale had managed more than a few sentences even when she had been talking to him. Would he be sitting up front or off to the side? She was betting off screen, given that the other Albah would spot his ears and demand to know why a human was here.

  Quinn was quite happy to break the rules when it suited him.

  Another blond man—obviously Albah—walked into the lounge room. Her heart stopped for a moment, but as soon as he looked at her she knew it wasn’t him.

  “Kirin, Leira. You would’ve met when you were babies.”

  “Hi.” He put out his hand. Solid and strong, rough with calluses. In that one touch she knew his magic was earth.

  “Hi.” Not a spark, not a thing between them. Relief and disappointment washed through her, but she managed to keep a smile attached to her face.

  Dale was starting to look like the odd one out with his green eyes and dark hair. In a room full of Albah, anything darker than ice blond stood out. If people asked if she had Nordic ancestry she usually shrugged and said probably. The truth was too weird for humans. Dale’s hair and eyes were the wrong color to be Albah and his ears lacked the distinctive fold at the top. That was the reason the Albah didn’t gather in large groups, they looked too similar and it drew attention.

  One of the laptops started pinging.

  Quinn sat down on the sofa and answered the call. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and couldn’t have looked less like a leader if he’d been trying. The Ryder family had ruled the Albah for centuries. Protecting, fighting, and doing what needed to be done.

  Leira sat off to the side with Dale. She had nothing to add to the meeting. No, but one day she would. She’d be expected to help keep the Albah together. She glanced at Dale and wondered if he knew what Saba had given up to be with him. It took Albah parents to have an Albah son. Saba would only have Albah daughters.

  As much as Leira didn’t like the way the Albah hid, she also knew that if they didn’t make changes soon, there would be no Albah men and gradually the bloodlines would weaken and then they would cease to exist. Not even history would remember them.

  That was why the Guardians of Adam targeted the men.

  She listened to the voices through the laptops. Mostly women. How skewed were the numbers? Her mother had gotten with Quinn to make sure she did the right thing by her people and to have a son before making her own life.

  Quinn had gone on to marry another Albah woman to do his bit to keep the bloodlines alive. More people needed to do the same, but it was the kind of thing that couldn’t be put into Albah law. It had been talked about, Saba had told her that, and it was a sore point for many. Leira didn’t care about kids. That was so far in her future. She cared about being able to share her magic with someone.

  Quinn got a text message and gave Dale a pointed look.

  What was going on?

  Dale got up and left without a word. Now she was interested.

  Twenty minutes later her curiosity got answered when Dale returned with another Albah man. Before the new arrival had even noticed her, she knew. It was him. The man she was supposed to meet on a train. He looked like any other Albah man, blond hair and blue eyes, but there was a set to his lips and a look in his eyes that she recognized in a blink. There was also the tug in her belly and a shimmer of awareness, which was quickly followed by rising panic.

  This was all wrong.

  Her future was changing, going up in flames.

  Then the crisps in the bowl next to her caught fire.

  Chapter 3

  Julian’s gaze was immediately drawn to the flames. He reached forward to extinguish them, but a gust of air sucked the oxygen away and put the flames out. The girl next to the bowl cringed, and pink swept across her cheeks. Their eyes met and for a moment he had that falling sensation that usually only happened in bed just as he was drifting off to sleep. He blinked. She wasn’t a girl, even though she had so little control over her magic, she was a young woman. A fire-using woman. Interest flared and was quickly smothered. She couldn’t have been much older than twenty.

  He didn’t have time to date. He already had one pissed-off part-time girlfriend. He shouldn’t be looking at anyone. But it was hard to look away.

  Her gaze lowered and she looked like she wanted to hide down the back of the chair.

  He knew the feeling. Right now all eyes were on him, even those across the globe.

  The noise in the rest of the room came flooding back. There was chatter coming from the laptops. He was late and his entrance had been more dramatic than he’d hoped for. He had planned to just slip in. However, it wasn’t every day his appearance caused things to burst into flames—flames he hadn’t caused.

  He smiled at her, hoping to ease the tension. She pulled her lips into something close to a grimace. She was clearly still in the “I want to die of embarrassment phase.”

  By the time he’d gotten hold of his magic, he’d accidentally set fire to his curtains, several plants, and his brother’s cherished and balding dinosaur plush toy—which he had been allegedly too big for and didn’t want. There had been a very somber funeral in the backyard for Rex.

  It had taken years to live that one down.

  His brother, Kirin, at the back of the room lifted his arms into a T-rex pose.

  Okay, he may never live that one down.

  He found a seat so he could listen and catch up on what he’d missed. Saba passed him a notepad. She was obviously acting secretary tonight. That should’ve been his job. He was supposed to be taking a bigger role, but his father understood that he couldn’t race out of work on the dot. His father had struggled to be there for him when he was growing up for exactly the same reason. Policing sometimes got in the way.

  Kirin and he had been very good friends with the old lady who had lived next door. She’d been the granny they didn’t have by blood and had made sure that they had somewhere to go after school.

  He skimmed the page of notes. He knew all about the Albanex and the cult that he had created around himself so he could feed and give himself access to living bodies. That was a disturbing piece of Albanex magic; feed a human some of your blood and then you could jump in their bodies and control them for short periods of time.

  The whole Albanex creation was disgusting.

  Judging from the question mark, they still had no idea who Gwinfor had sacrificed so that he could be undead. He was halfway down the page when he felt someone watching him from across the room. He lifted his gaze ever so slightly. It was the burning crisp woman. He smiled. She looked away and went to grab a crisp, only to remember they were now ash. She clenched her teeth and then settled back to ignore him in a very deliberate way by pai
nting her nails.

  Saba took the notepad out of his hand and wrote something on it, before taking meeting notes on another notepad.

  He glanced down to see what she’d written. Leira, my sister.

  Leira. Leira had fire-based magic like him. For that reason alone, he wanted to talk to her. Her blond hair was messy, her too-long bangs hiding her eyes. He let himself become entranced. It didn’t happen often and it had never happened with an Albah woman.

  “Guardian-caused deaths?” Quinn said.

  Julian snapped his attention to the meeting. He should be listening to what was going on, not watching a twenty-something paint her nails.

  “I don’t think so.” The woman on the laptop screen spoke in accented English.

  “There have been disappearances too,” an American woman said.

  “Are the police investigating?”

  “Yeah, just more missing people. No big deal.”

  People were chiming in and adding their opinions. This was a big conference call—so much more time efficient than gathering in one place to meet and talk. This way they could catch up more often. His father kept in regular contact with all the families on a more personal basis too, not just the big meetings.

  “Albah do drop off the radar,” Julian said. It was one of the problems with being so scattered. There was no way of really knowing how many were left. Some families had died out—natural or otherwise. Some chose not to keep in contact, believing they were safer on their own.

  He had read Saba’s note about a couple of new families getting in contact after the disappearance of a family member.

  Being scattered was still better than living together. Freaks did better when spread out among the general population. That he and his brother had looked so similar, right down to the folded ears and long middle toes, had been enough for the school bullies to make them a target.

  “Not at this rate,” the American woman said.

  “I think it is Guardian activity. Gwinfor did come from England, so maybe they were hunting him.”

  “Guardians would burn down the house to kill a spider,” someone else said.

  There was rapid conversation that he struggled to follow as people from all around the world added their stories. There were too many people here to listen to everyone.

  His father held up his hand. “Not every death is us being hunted. Some things are just accidents, wrong place, wrong time.”

  “A Guardian’s specialty,” a man spat. “You of all people cannot deny that.”

  His father winced. “That is true and there is no need to be complacent. If they know about the Albanex, they may consider the treaty broken.”

  There was silence for several seconds.

  “We do need to find out who made the Albanex. We believe it happened in America.”

  Someone laughed. “America has the biggest population of off-the-grid Albah.”

  “So we need to start finding them. I know several of you have been trying to piece together some family trees. That knowledge is very valuable.”

  Yeah, no one wanted to accidentally get with their first cousin. Julian kept that to himself. Everyone here or online would be aware of that. While he was aware of the need for more male Albah to be born, adding fresh blood to the old bloodlines by mixing with humans was beneficial.

  “Now is the time to go back to the old records, if you still have them, and work forward. See if you can track down missing relatives.”

  “They won’t be using Albah surnames anymore.”

  “None of us do, we changed them to fit in centuries ago. They would’ve gone one step further.”

  If Julian were planning on disappearing, he’d pick a random surname. Something unrelated to the Albah. It would be impossible to find someone on paper; it was only pictures that revealed Albah heritage.

  “One person who knows how to make Albanex out of three hundred and twenty million.”

  “Let’s hope it was only one person and they haven’t put the recipe online.” His father was deadly serious.

  The idea was chilling. How many disenfranchised Albah were there who would be willing to even attempt becoming Albanex?

  Someone laughed, high and nervous. “A how-to-make-a-vampire website?”

  Saba looked up. “I have found other rituals online. Make sure your teens aren’t posting magical selfies too.” She glanced at her sister. “We don’t want humans asking how it was done, or noticing too many similarities between us.”

  Leira rolled her eyes. Had she been guilty of posting something a little too true?

  She wasn’t his cousin. They weren’t related by blood. However, they did have a half-brother in common, but genetically that did not count. He should’ve seen her here before tonight. Had she been traveling with her mother? Or was Leira planning to disappear?

  Her mother would not like that. Her mother could be a truly terrifying woman when she wanted. He did not envy Kirin his new role working with her, even if he did get to travel.

  There some talk about the internet and social media and the danger it presented as well as the uses. Someone suggested that there be a face to face gathering in a few years’ time. It had been almost fifty years. Before the internet there must have been long letters of news making their way across the oceans by boat and then plane.

  His father wound down the meeting. With people promising to update him when they found out any news and his father vowing to keep them all updated and encouraging them to be careful but not fearful. Humans wouldn’t devolve into medieval-style witch hunts again.

  Leira snorted, then bit her lip.

  When the laptops were closed, his father turned his attention to Leira. “Magic going well, is it?”

  Julian had been on the receiving end of that look too many times. Good luck wriggling out of that one.

  Leira sighed. “I was shocked. It was an accident.”

  His father shook his head. “We can’t afford accidents like that.”

  Leira stood. “Why not? You just said that humans would be cool. Why can’t they learn to accept us?”

  His father drew in a breath, his gaze sharpening.

  Julian had to step in before his father got going. “Dad, I’ll spend some time with Leira. Fire isn’t easy.”

  Leira crossed her arms. “I don’t need help.”

  “Clearly you do,” his father said in his best I-am-the-king-and-you-will-listen voice. “You are a hazard to yourself and others. Julian has fire. I realize it’s not the same as having a fire woman teach you, but it’s all we have at the moment.” He looked at Saba and beckoned her out of the room.

  Well, this was a shitty way to end the evening. Saba would now get told off for not getting her sister help sooner. From the way Leira was looking at him he could see why Saba had not rushed to involve him. Though Julian wasn’t sure what he’d done to her. He’d never met her before… But he wanted to spend more time with her. There was a bone-deep resonance of need that was more than a little unsettling.

  He didn’t have time to teach someone how to control their magic even if she’d been willing. He shouldn’t have opened his mouth. Still, he’d volunteered and would have to make time. And so would she.

  “Julian’s a good guy.” Dale was risking having his pants set on fire by speaking. He was sure Dale was only saying that because Julian was worse at poker than he was.

  “You don’t get it.” She picked up her three bottles of nail polish and shoved them into her bag. Her glittering toenails disappeared into her shoes. “Sorry about the crisps.”

  Then she walked out.

  * * * *

  Shit. That was not how it was supposed to have been. The cold night air cooled the heat from Leira’s cheeks. Why hadn’t she just accepted his help? Julian was the guy and he’d just given her a perfect excuse to see him and get to know him. What was wrong with her?

  Aside from her inability to control her element?


  She wanted a flame right now so she could see if her future was still on track, but after the crisps incident she wasn’t going to do anything here where she could get caught screwing up. When she got home, she’d scry and hope everything was still on track, even though she’d met him in the wrong place.

  She unlocked her car and in the flash of the lights saw the car parked behind her. That had to be Dale. Had he done that deliberately after returning to the meeting with Julian? Now she’d have to go in and face them all again.

  Or wait for them to start to leave.

  She stared at the drawn curtains of the front room. They’d all be in there having a nice chat about the meeting and her impromptu fire. She wasn’t part of that circle. Hadn’t been allowed to be when she was still at school, and then she hadn’t wanted to be.

  She still didn’t want to be part of their secret society.

  No, but she did need help and Saba was already in the awkward position of having to supervise her. Leira knew her sister was also reporting back about her progress, or lack of. Quinn couldn’t have his people running around and making trouble and drawing attention.

  One photo had gotten her into trouble last year. She’d been holding fire in her palm and letting it light her face. Only Albah, or Guardians she supposed, would know the truth. The average human would think she had been holding a tea light or that the picture was edited. It made her smile to know that she wasn’t the only one taking magical selfies.

  She trudged back up to the front door. Her exit substantially less dramatic now that she had to go back. The door opened before she reached the step.

  “You’re still here. Great. Can you give me a lift to the train station?” Julian smiled.

  Leira wilted inside, but forced her lips to turn up. He had no idea how much she’d wanted to be at a train station with him. She stared at him for a moment, trying to convince herself that it wasn’t him. Couldn’t be him. But she’d known the moment their eyes had met. She’d known it was him in her bones, the same way she’d known that his brother was not the man on the train.

  Julian was unfortunately the man she had been waiting for. While she couldn’t say why she knew that to be true, she’d learned to trust her gut. Right now her gut wasn’t being helpful.